


Head in the Clouds

by yulchii



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: BAMF Shinsou Hitoshi, BAMF Skull (Reborn), Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Original Character(s), Parental Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Rebirth, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 13:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16347332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yulchii/pseuds/yulchii
Summary: Shinso Hitoshi's name was either a really weird coincidence or someone was screwing with him. It was either his parents or Byakuran, Skull still hasn't quite decided.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just want you all to know that I didn't even read/watch BnHA, I just read a bunch of fanfics and decided that yep, I need to do something. I don't know what I'm doing! Haha! (help) This is also posted on fanfiction.net

It really was quite bizarre, Skull thought, watching from his room as the children played in the backyard of the latest orphanage he was staying at. He leaned his chin on his fist, his eyes dully following the latest game of tag or as the children here called it, Onigokko.

He glanced at his door, knowing it was futile to try the doorknob, there were three locks on his door. From the outside, of course.

He returned his gaze to the window, eyes unfocusing and staring into his reflection. The window was coated in a layer of dirt but he knew very well that the circles under his purple eyes were very much real. His hair was as wild as ever, flyaway strands tickling his nose and sticking up like he just woke up. His lips were chapped and there was a cut on the left side of his mouth, angry red but not bleeding anymore. His tooth, he looked down for a moment to the little white thing on his windowsill and probed his gums with his tongue, was out. He bared his teeth at his reflection seeing the gap where his upper left canine used to sit firmly this morning.

He supposed that he should feel lucky it was still a milk tooth but the only thing he could feel at the moment was a simmering resentment and bitterness. Even this soon faded into an alltoo familiar blankness.

The slap to the face he received this morning courtesy of the matron had quite the power behind it. He really shouldn't have opened his mouth to ask for that fork. The caretakers in this home wouldn't give him any cutlery, only a plastic bowl with rice, fish and vegetables and a pair of chopsticks. His fingers were pudgy though, uncoordinated and too short to operate the chopsticks. He wasn't a native Japanese kid, he was an European through and through.

(Even after a lifetime of traveling as an Arcobaleno and his veritable love of Japanese sweets and treats, he simply never learned how to use chopsticks.)

At least he still had his flames, was the thought that kept pushing him forward. He snapped his fingers to see the purple fire flare up for a moment but quickly extinguished it, paranoid. It gave him power. Because even alone, hated and feared in equal measure, the knowledge that if push came to shove and he truly needed to get out, he  _could_. He just didn't feel the need to quite yet. This second (or was it even third, did being an Arcobaleno count?) go at childhood was very similar to his first. Being ostracized, without family and without friends, for something he couldn't control. It all checked out even if it was a little earlier than in his life of  _before_. At least he still had his father then. He didn't really know what (and if) to do something about it.

And now, as an about three year-old kid, in an alien world, without support of anything familiar, he  _drifted_. There was no Arcobaleno, as much as he could depend on them on the best of days, or even Vongola or the Shimon Families, whose bosses actually  _liked_ him for a change. He certainly could see a deeper working relationship with Enma at least, maybe not on the level of Reborn and the Vongola but  _something_.

He had nothing. Not even history. He didn't check every source yet but he was quite sure that Flames were an alien concept in this world. Oh, there were flame  _powers_ , he  _has_  seen them, but there were no Actives. No users of the Dying Will Flames (aside from him), every person he encountered had their flame so deeply buried inside, so  _smothered_  that he couldn't even tell what they  _were_.

And he knew that Flames were mostly Mafia stuff, yeah, top secret and all, but once you knew what to look for, you knew how to find the users and how to distinguish with the non-Actives and guess their dormant Soul Fire. And Skull, despite being an oblivious (partly by choice, partly because he didn't bother guy, and trying to pretend the Mafia was all one big joke (to somehow preserve his sanity, and optimism because it was pretty hard being positive when your whole life has been ripped away from you by a  _curse_  of all things, but apparently flames were real and so was all this magic mafia  _bullshit_ ), was still a mafioso. Even more importantly, he was still an Arcobaleno.

He was thrown into the Mafia a civilian with no idea of the world but he  _learned_. And Reborn may have been an asshole but nobody can say he was a bad teacher (an insane, trigger happy abuser, God  _yes_ , but he took teaching seriously and even got a goddamned  _degree in it_ ), he was also downright decent near the end. Also, Viper, but that took some money, the greedy bastard refused to even contemplate wasting time on explaining the Flames to a civilian without a hefty sum paid forward. With time, his relationship with the other members of the Cursed Seven (plus Lal Mirch, plus Aria and Yuni later on) has deepened and so did their desire to see him make something out of himself in this shitty situation.

So he learned, from the glimpses and from the real lessons provided by his friends (?). And after spending so long amongst Mafia people, he could recognize an Active, someone on the brink of becoming one or even when a  _situation_  involving them and the Mafia (or Yakuza or even the Triads) happened.

But there was none of these here. Even during the calmest of times among the Mafia, there were still incidents, a burst of power here, an Active on rampage there, weirdly masked happenings covered by the power of money and just sheer disregard of logic (as was the Vongola way) or, just,  _something_. It was easy for him to know when some incidents were hidden with the intention of attending to the civilians and those not under the Omerta. Because it was always obvious once you knew what to look for and it wasn't  _here_ , damn it, not in this world. Not one incident of mysterious fires or a whisper of weirdness in Italy or  _anything_.

He wasn't home, not anymore. Was it the future? Or an alternate universe? A different world altogether? He didn't rightly know.

He didn't remember anything past getting shot in the head by the Vindice, not really. When he woke up, he was smaller than his normal toddler form. And more restricted. He couldn't talk, could hardly move and when he did, it was uncoordinated and flailing (which, fair, he did flail  _a lot_  even back then, but it was more dramatic and controlled than  _this_ ) and he could not  _control his bowel_. Basically, he was a real flesh and blood child.

He didn't remember much of his early life or when  _exactly_  he recovered his memories of a past life.

He was in enough of a shock that he didn't even notice that his caretakers changed very often,  _too_  often to be a coincidence. When he finally did notice, he could tell there were two options, either he was still himself, only shrunk, without the access to his adult strength as his cursed form allowed, or he was born as something entirely new, with a new set of parents. If it was  _this second option_ , he could see that there were  _no_  parents, which meant if he was born anew, he was an orphan already.

He knew he wasn't thrown back in time, he was born in  _Czechoslovakia_ , for God's sake, in 1963. He had a strict father who died when he was 14 and no known mother.  _This_  clearly wasn't a country in Eastern Europe, during the 60s no less. There were flat TVs, telephones, computers, the cars were all modern. And it was freaking  _Japan_.

So no. It was either the future or an alternate universe. He still had to decide which (but he was really banking on the parallel world theory).

He jerked back into present when a blink of light caught his eye. He squinted, looked out the window and frowned. A boy, about 5 years old was showing the other kids his arm, which looked like it was made out of some reflexive surface, maybe a mirror or just really polished metal. The sun beating down on the small yard, the light bouncing off the arm every which way.

This was another thing.  _Quirks_.

He looked away and scowled down at his tooth, picking it up between small, childish fingers, examining it glumly. The whole reason he got knocked in the mouth with a backhand and his door had three locks, all currently engaged in the middle of the day. The reason why he was ordered by his caretakers to  _just be quiet_  and to not even  _look_  at the others and just  _get back into the room and eat your food and stay there_ in such desperate voices.

They  _feared_  him. They were afraid of what he could do even though he's been in this orphanage for a total of about two weeks. He didn't even  _do_  anything, to  _anyone_ , since he learned what his quirk was capable of doing to others. That was about three orphanages  _ago_.

He didn't really care about playing with other children, he was a grown  _man_ , but he  _was_  craving human interaction like crazy. No one ever talked to him and  _he_ couldn't talk if he wanted to keep his teeth intact.

Mind Control wasn't a generally accepted quirk, it seemed like.

* * *

Skull continued his idle observation of the yard until the sun set and the children returned to the building for supper. He waited patiently for half an hour, and when a stampede of feet and a cacophony of voices could be heard below his room, he carefully jumped down from the windowsill, mindful of his toddler-soft body.

He hesitated and, after a moment, placed his tooth under his flimsy pillow, knowing that it was stupid but somehow feeling that the tradition needed to be upheld. His father, even if a real hard-ass, always traded a small piece of candy or some flimsy plastic bauble under his pillow at night, in exchange for nearly every tooth that fell out during his childhood.

He wasn't really hoping for anything, it was just a stupid little thing, he didn't know what to do with it, that's why he put it there, but somehow, remembering his childhood almost succeeded in putting smile on his face.

There was a perfunctory knock on his door and soon enough series of clicks, letting him know of the locks being opened. He stood in front of his small bed, his arms loose at his sides, eyes looking forward so that he would be looking at a normal adult's knee (he was  _that_  short, when oh when and  _will_  he ever regain his height?). Keeping his expression blank and his mouth in a tight line, he waited.

The woman that opened the door was old, about 60 years old, with wrinkles and stress lines but she looked like she smiled a lot, there were deep groves near her mouth and crows feet near her eyes. She looked like a typical grandmother, nice and plying her grandkids with money and hard candy.

She never smiled around him.

She waved her hand at him, a stilted, jerky motion, and turned around sharply, walking off down the corridor with him following a few steps behind. She walked slowly enough that he didn't feel like he was running to catch up but were he to speed up and try to walk with her, he's sure she would notice.

He didn't try moving faster.

As they descended the stairs, he could feel yelling and laughing from the floor below his but didn't try to stop and peek at the children no doubt playing in their shared rooms. They reached the ground floor and came to the kitchen where a single bowl of rice, fish vegetables and a plastic sippy cup full of water were laid out on the counter for him.

There was no one else in the kitchen.

The old matron stepped to the side and he walked in fully, moving sedately to take a seat at the tall counter. He didn't need to look at her to know that she was watching him like a hawk. He slowly pulled himself up and wiggled a little on the tall chair to settle, clapped his hands in a prayer, not muttering the customary 'Itadakimasu' and began eating.

The meal was a little bland but filling. No one could tell that his needs weren't met. He couldn't really complain, they were feeding him, clothing him and housing him. The matron watching him eat was silent but he knew that even though she was uncomfortable with his very existence, she wouldn't poison him or watch him choke on his food.

The backhand from this morning was really a rarity in this case. Maybe she was startled or was just in a bad mood. No one beat him, the matron sometimes stared at him coldly when it looked like he was about to open his mouth but the smack she delivered that day was probably the only time he was touched since he came here. The other caretakers didn't interact with him at all and he was forbidden from approaching other kids (not that he could, being locked up in his room all day, let out for the meals and then constantly under the matron's eye, there and back into his room).

He hoped they moved him to another orphanage soon, then at least he could go out for a moment, if only for the duration of the travel.

The point was, he understood, he really did. Brainwashing was a really frightening concept and the fact that it was wielded by a child instead of an adult made people more unsure about whether to be grateful or even more afraid.

He ate quickly, chopsticks clumsy, lip stinging, resigned to helping himself with the fingers of his other hand.

"Hitoshi," he turned at the call, his new name unable to ignored, he got used to it rather quickly. Whoever named him  _had_  to have known about his quirk though, there was no way that his name was some random coincidence, Person and Use? Along with his surname, he didn't really need to announce his quirk, it would suffice if he just introduced himself.

The matron was standing by the door, waiting.

"You're done. Come," and she started walking off. He grabbed the sippy cup with him, slid off his seat and trotted after her, holding onto his drink with both hands. His purple hair bounced with every step he took, big violet eyes following the knees of the elderly matron.


	2. Chapter 2

Heroes and villains. That was the world he lived in now. The world of quirks. It was freaky at first, seeing for example a person with a head of a  _bug_  of all things, and butterfly wings. But he got used to it.

He didn't exactly ask to be put into this situation, if he could find a way home, he  _would_  take it, but he also wasn't actively looking fot it. He found some peace here, despite being an ostracized orphan.

Despite not being a scientist, he still found himself researching the history of quirks with fierceness that surprised even himself. Brainwashing. How could a person just  _do_  that. For the record, what  _was_  a quirk, exactly, what kind of energy provided for the manifested power? Was it a virus or was it like flames, something that all humans just  _had_. Was it connected to the body, the soul, the mind or even the nature?  _Why_  were there different quirks,  _how_  did they develop? He had so many questions and the only things he could find was mere speculation.

And no one was taking it seriously, he realized. They all took it for granted, no one thought about it at all. It was unsettling. It was  _pissing him off_. The huge gap in knowledge was staggering and nobody cared.

The more he settled in this world, the more he started thinking about the future. Who shall he become. As the times were different, running away and joining a traveling circus as he did when he was a child the first time around was out of the question. Mafia, if it existed in some capacity, probably was so far underground, he wouldn't have a chance of finding it easily too soon. And they probably weren't the Mafia he knew (full of crazy, but  _good_  crazy, Vongolaesque crazy).

He guessed that here mafia were  _real_  scum of the world and as he didn't ever take enjoyment out of killing, women (not that he could, with the body of a baby, the curse of Arcobaleno took many things from him but that one was pretty harsh for him, a stuntman, an actor  _and_  a biker mixed in, ladies loved him back when they were still  _legally allowed_  to) or dealing drugs, he didn't think he qualified anymore.

A police officer, an interrogator, a secret service agent were his next thought. Being on the other side of law enforcement would be exciting, and those jobs promised not to leave him bored out of his mind as he would have been if he just worked as a  _clerk_  or a shop assistant. Even so, all these options felt bland to him, tasteless. He couldn't use his quirk without permission in these professions.

And so presented itself his most interesting choice.

He was in front of a TV when he first felt a spark of his old self. Just a small flare but still. The internal buzz of apathy he felt since he was dumped in this world lifted a little as new possibilities flew through his mind, stumbling over each other jumbled but  _there_.

Sitting on the carpet, eyes glued to the screen, in his first foster home. His foster parents were asleep, as were the three other kids he shared the house with. It was 2 o'clock in the morning and he could not stay in bed any longer, tossing and turning and listening to the calm breaths of his roommates.

Bluish glow from the monitor was the only source of light in the living room.

There was a news channel playing a footage of the first ever appearance of a new hero, dubbed Eraser Head.

He knew about heroes, of course he did, the world was full of them but somehow-

He liked this one  _the best_.

(The next time he was in the bathroom, he smoothed his hair back a few times, making his bangs stand up and show his forehead, just like the hero, childish face staring back at him with some life in it, his eyes shining and a smile creasing his face for the first time in a long while.)

Somehow he didn't think there were any like  _that_. Kinda like  _him_. He was often enough looked at like a bomb about to go off, like he was born with the intention to set out and enslave humanity. Eraser seemed to be a little similar. With a scary quirk (intended for damaging others, not anything like a flight quirk or even fire, those could be used for different things than hurting and fighting, Brainwashing, on the other hand, only had one purpose) which was pretty useless in a psychical, up-close fight-

He stopped that train of thought. Or  _was_  it useless? Was it really? Eraser Head could surprise his opponents at any given moment, taking and giving back their quirk at all moments, making his enemies  _at least_  stumble, unprepared and overloaded, irritated and uncontrolled.

And Skull… His Brainwashing leaned heavily on verbality. He asked, they responded and he  _had_  them in his grasp. If they didn't respond, he couldn't control them.

But what if he asked a question  _without using words_? There were those things, nonverbal ques. Maybe if he used gesticulation? Utilized face expression? Would it  _work_?

He didn't ever finish school but he knew some basic psychics. For every action there is a reaction.

He was no Reborn,  _or_  Verde. Those things didn't come as naturally to him, he wasn't a born genius or a hitman of that calibre (Reborn with his multiple doctorates and master's degrees always made him deadpan, being both). But he wasn't stupid. He was in this world for nearly five years, he  _has_   _adapted_.

After all, clouds changed their shape any way the wind blew. And he was once the strongest Cloud on the planet.

He needed to  _think_.

* * *

The life continued on.

Thankfully, he was able to look on the situation from the perspective of a stranger. He was damn sure that if Shinso Hitoshi was anyone  _but_  him, the kid would have been pretty damaged by now. Social isolation, at home and at school. His guardianship changed hands often enough that he didn't have any deeper bond with any adult or child, being thrown from one foster home to another, juggled from one family to another. He changed school just as regularly, no classmate meaning more to him than a side character in a book.

He never fit in. He was never welcome.

He knew that him secretly being an adult inside was unnerving to some because people had  _expectations_  of a child with the history of Shinso Hitoshi.

He should have been a troubled kid, seeking attention and affection, hurt by the implications of villainy that were constantly tossed at him.

Instead, he just  _was_. He existed around all those people, he didn't want to fit in, didn't need their approval, he lived on the periphery and he was so  _used_  to it that he didn't even notice, his craving for human contact was reduced to a small yearning, poking up every now and then. Contact with cats reduced it to nothing but a small pinprick.

His Cloud instincts were practically napping by now, after never fully releasing his Flames for more than a decade, he never had a place to settle, a territory he could claim (like little Hibari, boy was  _damn_   _cute_  with his patrols and territorial paranoia) or even a person he could stick to.

Drifting and gaining strength was what he did. (It was the calm before the storm.)

There were moments of irritation when he heard a comment like: "Brainwashing? That's so creepy! Don't answer him, he can make you do anything he wants!", or "That's such a typical villain quirk!" but all in all, his life passed him by in a blur.

He supposed, in some way, the fact that he had somewhat of an obsession with Eraser Head helped in establishing him as a relatively normal kid. Or as normal as an orphan in his circumstances could be. Although others always found it weird when he admitted that the man was his favourite hero, at least he  _had_  a favourite hero (and not a favourite  _villain_ ). Either way, he didn't get a therapist, that was all that  _really_  counted. (He wouldn't admit it out loud but brushing back his bangs wasn't because they got in the way, the hero may have had a  _tinny tiny_ bit of influence in that decision, but just a  _little_.)

Being constantly hustled to different homes had a negative side effect of him not having much in the way of personal things. The only constants in his life were the cheap yellow googles he acquired from a gift shop somewhat illegally (just once, and only the once, he used his powers in that way, he really wanted, no,  _needed_  them, for, ehm,  _research purposes_ ) and some playing cards (with three copies of Eraser Head's card but who was there to look through them with him, he just had luck getting Eraser more often than other heroes) placed in a ziplock bag.

Clothes were always touch and go, as he grew like a weed, he had a feeling he would be quite tall in the future. (He nostalgically wondered if he would be taller than that bastard Reborn and Verde, back when they first met before the Curse, and, if so, how smug he would have been to shove it into Reborn-senpai's face.)

* * *

His main problem was that he couldn't practice alone. He needed a test subject but no sane human would ever agree to willingly be brainwashed.

He has lived for a total of about fifty years though, he could figure out a new power he was gifted quicker than your average child, even without the means to really let himself go and test it out.

Soon he turned 7 and was thrown into his first foster home, that's when the opportunity for trying out his power came. He didn't have his own room anymore, he wasn't as closely monitored as before because there were no instances of him using his quirk noted in his file, the adults let up on keeping every little thing he did under surveillance.

Brainwashing was an Emitter type of quirk. He could only affect the living ( _probably_ , maybe it only needed some  _more_  training or some kind of  _push_ , he needed to investigate that more-), he could control groups (he didn't really manage to find out his limit and didn't dare ask anyone to be his subject) and he needed to ask a question first (maybe if he used his quirk more freely with some instruction it could change and he would  _grow_ ).

The few times he managed to practice on a human were rare. Humans were tricky but he learned to catch every opportunity he could to practice. He, of course started with strangers, kids were usually his best test subject. He found out a few things that way.

He needed them to respond to his question, but  _not necessarily_  verbally. For example, asking someone on the street which way lead to the park and them pointing him in the direction  _worked_. It was a trump card for him and he kept it a secret, aware that it would only make everyone more scared of him.

Ordering someone to forget all about his quirk worked too, but he kept it quiet, as it could come useful later on. (His order to completely forget about his usage of quirk on his foster sibling was worded by him very carefully:  _"Forget permanently that I've ever used my quirk on you and if you ever remember, don't talk to anyone about it."_  It almost made him feel bad and like morality was a faraway concept then, but he didn't regret doing it because in the end it worked (or at least the boy never blabbed from what he knew)) I He wondered where the memories went though, if they vanished permanently or if they were stored somewhere and could be restored. Would his command for something like that ever cease to be? Did it have a time limit, a range, would it still work when he was miles away?

He  _was_  frustrated with the slow progress in getting to know his quirk, he had so many questions, not even mentioning training it though.

It would be one of the main factors in choosing his high school. He needed the means to practice, from targets to instructors and a second opinion because doing it by himself was just flying blind.

* * *

And then he was in the last year of middle school and it was time for high school applications.

Well, Skull was always a contrary piece of shit. He was nearing adult age, hero work was a paying job and he didn't really know how to be anything but himself (stuntman, acrobat, vigilante, criminal,  _Mafia_ ) so he supposed a school where they  _teach_  them the way of heroism (plus, the profession was considered prestigious) may be his best bet.

Hearing his whole new life that he  _can't_ , he was ready to shove in everyone's faces that he  _can_ do whatever the hell he wanted.

He always liked a little drama anyway. Being the centre of attention was in his (former) job description. After all, a stuntman that was not in the spotlight couldn't call himself a stuntman.

He applied to U.A. High School, of course, a Totoro-like grin on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

He just wanted to live this life in the best way he could. Just for himself. Just to enjoy the  _normal_  (for this world) life of a  _normal_  person, not constantly running from law or Child Protective Services (that's why he and the others rarely ever ventured outside of the Mafia world and into the civilian one, Reborn being the exception but when was the devil bastard not).

And despite being Mafia, everyone including him knew he wasn't suited for it. He didn't enjoy it. But, being a hero. He liked helping people, even if he was constantly tired, even if humanity itself was exhausting and selfish and never knew, never understood the sacrifice that Skull along with the other seven had to make (without consent) in order for the world not to fall apart at the seams. And they never will as they weren't the people he defended but a whole different bunch.

He was no scholar but he liked learning. He had a whole new power that he didn't understand and using it outside of specific circumstances was breaking law. Using the Quirk as a Hero was treated with lax acceptance. Being a hero was interesting, (was something to do) and he wasn't knowingly walking into the shit that was the underworld ever again.

* * *

His life was quite boring and monotonous up until the high school applications. Technically, he didn't really need to train, he was experienced enough at using his Flames within his body, enhancing his muscles, multiplying his strength and keeping him in a state of being constantly ready for action. Despite that he still decided that training his body wasn't exactly a bad idea. And so he started jogging nearly every day, exercising when he had the time.

But as food was sometimes a little scarce (sometimes for  _him_  specifically, sometimes for all of the kids) and sometimes he couldn't be really bothered to  _care_  about keeping up with eating regularly or in proper portions, he was quite skinny. Thanks to his flames, his metabolism was also a lot faster than any normal human's, so even if he was treated on par with the other kids and the food was enough for them, he still would have needed more. He was also a kid still, his limbs long and gangly, constantly growing. And so, there was wiry muscle clinging to his bones, unassuming, making him look half-starved and in constant need of a meal or ten.

Ironically, he spent quite a lot of time studying. He  _was_  a lot older than the rest of this body's peers but he went to school  _years_  ago, in a different era, in a different country  _and_  in a different world.

Math was math so that was good, even though the examples were done in a different way and he needed to refresh all his knowledge (which was quite shaky, it was years since he needed to apply the goddamn Pythagorean theorem, he applied it exactly  _not even once_  since ditching his education the first time). He was grasping Psychics' concepts somewhat quick, he liked Chemistry only when he was allowed to blow something up or light something on fire and that was precisely never.

Other subjects were completely new and needed his complete and utter attention, like Social Studies and History.

Biology on the other hand.

What in  _actual seven hells_  did a  _toe joint_  have to do with Quirks. What the hell. And nobody could explain it, nobody knew  _why_ , everyone just accepted it as the holy truth and moved on. Which was. Unacceptable. And if  _he_  was on the constant verge of blowing a gasket about the lack of information, Verde would have had an aneurysm. Hell, Reborn would have rained hell on those so called scientists.  _After_  the hitman gained a degree in Quirk History and Biology and figured out the answer to all the universe's questions, of course, that crafty bastard. Lal would have gone into conniptions at this world's incapability to just fucking  _deciding_  and at their baffling inability to stop coming up with the conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories that were taken as the ultimate truth and shoved down children's throats at school.

He was breaking out into hives just  _thinking_  about it. The others would have been driven mad.

* * *

He was never a good student. He was the  _talented but lazy one_. It wasn't so much laziness as lack of funds, with his father's death, he dropped out of school and joined the circus because everyone and their grandma knew that an orphanage was just  _not_  a place to be.

But here. Here he was going to be a  _hero_ , to do that he wanted to go to UA and for that he needed to be the best.

He had good grades, was actually at the top of his class but the truth was that there was nothing to brag about, as he was technically competing with teenagers, little kids, who were younger than him by  _a lot_.

It would have been an embarrassment if he was anything but the best amongst actual, literal children. (He felt a little bad about that, sometimes, when he could muster enough of a spark in himself to actually look beyond his own nose and around at the people surrounding him. He had a  _huge_  headstart. It couldn't even be called that, it seemed like he was basically at the finish line, just fooling around, while they all scrambled after him.)

And so, with experience of one lifetime and all the regrets that came with it, he didn't really mind having to sit down and cram like his life depended on it, because he knew that it  _did_.

* * *

Applying to UA was all well and good but he needed to take the entrance exams and in order to do that he needed to actually, psychically be there. It was a little hard when he was living on the other side of Japan.

He needed money.

He just needed to decide what skills to use. He was a little too young to work. The only ones who would hire a 14-year-old kid would probably be villains and as much as the idea was interesting (because actual goddamn villains, what even is this life, was there Captain America here too? (He was a nerd, he read  _all_  the comics)), he knew that it wouldn't fly. Not with him wanting to go to a Hero Academy.

He wasn't going to  _steal_  the money needed for the journey either. He figured that with him being an aspiring hero and all, he may need to  _maybe_  shape the heck up. A little. And he wasn't a thief ( _no_ , those Eraserhead's googles did  _not_  count, he just picked them up and forgot to put them back while he walked out of the gift shop, an accident, honest).

So.

Let it never be said that Skull wasn't a resourceful little bastard.

Getting dropkicked into the Mafia and this Flame and Arcobaleno bullshit and  _then_  getting a kick in the ass from the other members of the Rainbow Babies? Fine, he could do this on his own. He found his own way, his own means of survival. The Carcassa Famiglia was just that, bunch of idiots that they were (he would never admit to getting attached to those losers) (he could already hear Reborn calling him the bigger loser and snorting something about flocking together or some other assholish comment that senpai was fond of hurling at him).

Skull, for all his theatrics and whining and screaming, wasn't a complete waste of space and he  _could_  learn. And in all his years as a member of the underground, he did.

In the end, getting to UA wasn't really that hard. He was taller than the average kid, but he was still a kid. And while his eyes were constantly surrounded by heavy bags, sleep being as elusive as it was in his previous life, they were still that of a child. Big and sparkling (persuasive). It helped that despite his quirk being neatly written down in his files, he never displayed a reckless usage of his power (that anyone  _knew_  of).

He was just a sarcastically bitter child, who wanted to give being a hero a shot. Who, despite being born with a dangerous ability and being ostracized for it, was still eager to help people. What kind of monster would not help him?

Sadly adorable. Like a kitten out in the rain.

Well, if only they knew that he was just using that image. He wasn't helpless, he wasn't  _sad_  about people mistreating him over the nature of his Quirk. (Just pissed.)

He learned a lot from Reborn, the lessons given voluntarily or not, willingly or not,  _knowingly_  or not.

He looked up at a particularly weak-for-kids caretaker at his next stay in a group home, widened his eyes, story about heroes spilling, revealed his ambition to overcome the label of his quirk and  _begged_.

The woman didn't cave. She folded like a wet tissue.

Manipulation wasn't beneath him, it was practically in his blood (in his toe joint?), even if he didn't use his Quirk, his natural charm (Reborn-senpai must be laughing hard at that, the devil) and child's natural innocence (even if the child in question looked like he did, tired and wrung out, scarecrow hair and Cheshire grins and creepy face) were actually just as good.

* * *

He took a train and a few hours later he was there, walking through the humongous gates and following the noisy crowd of teenagers.

The written test was hard for him, he couldn't imagine his real teenage self sitting through it and writing anything other than his name on the top. But as an adult, he answered every single question, hesitating at a few 'what if' scenarios presented to him. He tried to think like Tsunayoshi, minimal damage (ha, ironic, Vongola itself was all about the damage, but the early version of Tsuna-kun always freaked out at the massive amounts of destruction, channelling him wasn't especially difficult as they were quite similar in that, the Skull that first faceplanted into the Mafia worried constantly about that), worry about the civilians, don't needlessly endanger anyone, including yourself.

Present Mic was actually a pretty interesting hero. Skull liked him. (Attention, lights, screaming even through a microphone, upbeat attitude and a stupid grin on his face. What was not to like-)

Then came the practical part of the exam.


End file.
